"Oh very good indeed!" exclaimed Semphill, with a hearty reminiscent shout of laughter. "But, Holiness," Sterling gravely continued, "one knows that the statements are not true. One knows that the article mispresents You entirely." "They are not wholly true; and the article entirely mispresents Us." "One would recommend that that should be made known." "It is known. Hundreds know it. They are not prevented from saying what they know.--If they dare." Hadrian came down from the throne. A grey shadow hardened the sharpness of the face. The brows and the eyes were drawn into parallels, the latter half-shut; and the thin lips were straight and cruel. Their Eminencies mindfully retired. Van Kristen lingered till the others were gone. "Holy Father," he said, "I guess that You're feeling it about as bad as the next man?" Hadrian pressed the slim brown hand, on which the cardinalitial sapphire looked so absolutely lovely, "Perhaps, Percy:" He said. "I think I won't go back to Dynam House this fall," the cardinal continued. "They can do without me, Holiness. If I'm any good to You here, I'm no quitter so long as my eyes remain black." "You always are good and useful to Us, Venerable Father," the Pope very stiffly said, as He quickly passed through the curtains of the secret antechamber. Now the world had something to talk about beside the chances of universal war, and the inferiority of the present Pope. When the dispersal of the treasures of the Vatican was announced in the Sacred Consistory, five cardinals walked straight out to swear, four burst into tears, eight spoke their minds quite freely and (in the case of two) at the top of their voices, and the rest were dumb. Ragna, Berstein, Cacciatore, and Vivole came to the conclusion that Hadrian's new move was a pontifical red-herring intended to divert the scent from the newspaper-calumnies against George Arthur Rose. They went about trying to make people see the thing from their point of view. Kelts and Catholics throughout the world set up howls; and compared Hadrian to Honorius to the advantage of the latter. "From a Catholic point of view," wrote one clerical gentleman (who in youth, as an attaché in Paris, had been known as La Belle Anthropophage), "it is impossible to blame Hadrian too severely." He was ruined, they said with unctuous rectitude; and He was going to sell the Vatican Treasures in order to provide an iniquitous provision for a disreputable and private old age. Naturally they judged by their own standard. All Catholics do.